Building strong bonds between home and school is one of National Middle School Association's (2003) 14 characteristics for successful middle schools set forth in "This We Believe". Getting teachers to actually believe in the value of parental involvement is not always easy. This article examines a range of key issues in the literature on parental involvement. The article then addresses some practical suggestions for teachers to assist them in embarking on an effort to open lines of communication between their classrooms and their students' homes. Parental involvement is carefully defined, and the benefits of parental involvement are discussed. After exploring the reasons school efforts to generate parental involvement sometimes fail, the article concludes by describing several key methods for involving parents successfully in their children's education. To add a sense of context to the discussion, woven throughout the article are real e-mail communications between parents and teachers. These e-mails should help readers gain a clearer understanding of the benefits and challenges of making a parent contact program work. This article also presents a middle school parent contact program at a Pennsylvania middle school. The goal of this program is to strengthen lines of communication between the home and the school. Like most schools, this middle school has, for many years, made basic efforts to involve parents in their students' education.